Wonders Never Cease
by storybycorey
Summary: Post Babylon porch sex. Need I say more?


"What, Mulder?" she squeezes his palms between her fingers, watches as he cocks his head and listens to something she cannot hear. "What is it?"

"Nothing, Scully," he smiles down at her, squeezing her hands back in answer, "I'm just listening. Just opening my heart and listening.… C'mon, Scully" he pulls her back toward the house, "I want you to hear something."

Wonders really never do cease with this man. In twenty-three years, she has lost count of the surprises he has hidden up his sleeve.

Each time she thinks she has completely unraveled the yarn of him, he turns and shows her a new row of stitches, more intricate and elaborate than the last.

Last year, she was sure he was at his end, she was sure he'd finally come undone. A tangle of wool on the floor was all that was left of him. When months went by, and he still had not rewoven himself, she had seen no option but to leave. She began wondering whether perhaps she's the one who had done all his unraveling in the first place.

Yet here they are today, walking hand in hand, and he is shimmering beneath the sun with new stitches, sewn fully through to his soul. As they walk across the grass, she can't help but imagine tunneling her fingers through the yarn, wrapping herself up in his warmth.

They reach the steps of the old house and she murmurs, "I miss it here, Mulder. I miss this porch…"

"The porch misses you, too, Scully," he says quietly, tugging on her fingers until she sits in the old blue chair. He pulls another over to sit beside her, and she remembers when they bought them, at a flea market back in the beginning, back when building a home together had felt like an answered prayer.

He picks up his phone, "Listen, Scully," then gives her one of the earbuds, bringing the other up to his own ear as he presses play. They tilt their heads together and listen to the song in silence, contemplating loneliness, family, sweethearts. When it ends, he turns it off and smiles at her.

She gives him a bemused grin, shaking her head, "What was that, Mulder? A love letter?"

He chuckles, looking down into his lap, "Yeah, Scully. That was my love letter to you." Then he adds in a voice dripping with honey, "Sweetheart…"

She laughs, "Mulder, you've never called me 'sweetheart' in the twenty-three years I've known you. Why start now?" New stitches or not, syrup-y declarations have never been their style.

He grins, reaching out and picking up her hand, dangling it between them while he slides his thumb against her wrist. A bridge hovering above a lake of white-planked wood. "I know, Scully. It was a joke. Kind of…," he swings their arms slightly for emphasis.

As she watches the tremor rocking their bridge, she feels him grow serious. A weight settles in the air around them, and she catches his eye. "I've been trying lately, Scully. I've been opening my heart, listening…," his voice sounds like the gravel of their driveway, every time she drives across it and finds her way back home.

"I know, Mulder. I've seen it," she says quietly, dropping her eyes to her lap.

"I was like the Babylonians, Scully," he continues, "Always searching for the truth, hoping to become god-like in my knowledge, allowing it to consume me. But it backfired… it's what eventually broke us apart." She is still, listening, gripping his hand in attempt to decipher the puzzles within his head, within his heart. "I think we stopped speaking the same language, Scully, we stopped understanding one another."

"I don't think I ever stopped understanding you, Mulder," she murmurs, "I just think you got to a place where you didn't want to be understood, by me or by anyone."

"You may be right…," he pulls her hand into his lap and folds it between both of his, "but now…, now I want to be understood again, Scully. By you. I want us to speak a common language again, that beautiful language that only the two of us understand. I want that again, Scully."

She is surprised to feel tears burning her eyes, but she blinks them away before turning to meet his eyes. "I want that, too, Fox," the tears have slipped down her throat and have drowned her voice, leaving it misty and damp with emotion. "I want it so badly, but I don't know if I can walk down that path with you again, Mulder. I don't want to reconnect with you only to find you unraveled on the floor again in six months."

He strokes her hand, playing with her fingers as they speak, cradling it as if it were a fragile, newly-laid egg. "I've changed, Scully," he says, "Going back to work has helped me put things into perspective. My years holed up in this little house, they weren't good for me. I became so singularly focused. All I cared about was finding the truth, the answers, "winning" the game. But now, Scully…, now at the end of each day, I come back here and I realize there are things that are so much more important than that. Family. Blood. I keep opening my heart, listening. And over and over again, I'm led back to you. You're my family, my world," he glances over at her and catches her eye, then grins playfully, "my sweetheart."

"Mulder," she rolls her eyes, holding back a shy grin, touched more than she'd like to admit by his words. He has always been a master at charming her, at twinkling his eye and twisting his tongue in just the right way to make her follow him anywhere. She takes a deep breath and says, "So, let's just say that I agree, that we're ready to find our common language again. How would you propose we begin?"

He trails his fingers up her arm, tickling her wrist, and she shudders in response. "We begin in the way we've always communicated best, Scully," his voice ignites her senses just as powerfully as his fingers upon her skin. "With touch." Her breath hitches as his hand slides beneath the arm of her blazer, finding the soft skin of her inner elbow and teasing it with a finger.

"Touch?" she murmurs, drawing her arm away from him and grazing his denim-covered thigh with her nails, "what makes you think touch is our best way of communicating? I always thought we excelled at verbal discourse, didn't you?"

"Hmmm," he hums, picking her hand up once again and bringing it to his lips, "While I agree, we do shine where intellectual discussion is concerned, I still think we'll find common ground much more easily through tactile efforts," and he slides his tongue across her palm, eliciting a squeak from her throat in surprise. He continues up her index finger, then sucks the digit into his mouth, smiling when she tries to hold back a groan.

"Ummm, okay," she breathes, "Point taken. But it's a little difficult to continue our discussion…," she interrupts herself with a gasp, as he does something particularly lovely to the finger in his mouth, "ummm… ah…a little difficult to continue, with me over here, and you so far over there…."

He pulls her finger from his mouth and kisses her knuckles. He looks her directly in the eye and says, "Then get over here, Scully."

And she does. She pulls off her blazer and climbs into his lap, straddling him, then brings her lips to his ear and whispers, "Speak to me in our language, Mulder… please…."

And he's never heard a more remarkable request. He pulls her to his mouth and he devours her. It's been so long since he's tasted her, so long since he's even been capable of speaking to her this way.

And he can't help himself, he releases every single word, every single syllable, he's held back, in a sudden rush against her lips. He speaks to her in words only she understands, phrases that could only have emerged through years of intimate dialogue. Poetry and prose, secrets and confessions, prayers and praise, her mouths deciphers it all.

She slides her fingers through his hair and whimpers, pressing against him with all her strength, gathering all their lost conversation into the shell of her body, to hold, to covet, to absorb.

He reaches beneath her shirt, traces the contour of her spine before unfastening her bra. And before his hands have even finished, she is arching her back, begging for his touch on her breasts. He finds her nipples and pinches them, moaning when he feels them harden against his thumb. Then he floats his fingers across their peaks and reads them like braille.

She crushes herself against him, desperate for more, throbbing with a need that is months, even years, old. How could they have given this up? How could they have let this go?

Before he realizes what's happening, she is pulling herself up, climbing from his lap to stand before him. He groans, but she is already removing her shirt, pulling it off with her bra and tossing it onto the ground. He watches as her pants and underthings join the pile, as he sits, unmoving, in awe. He'd forgotten how breathtaking she is, flushed pink with arousal, breathless with want, and he desires nothing more than to look at her for hours, the sunlight catching her curves like a prism.

"Mulder," she murmurs, stepping back into the V of his legs, swaying backwards, forwards, hypnotizing him with her proximity. He finally breaks himself of her spell and realizes she's waiting, waiting for him. He drags down his jeans and boxers, then yanks off his shirt, never taking his eyes off her face.

Then he holds out his hand to her and pulls her down into his body. She steps her legs delicately through the arms of the chair and lowers herself, slowly, slowly, until her wet and throbbing center is laid against his hardened cock. They groan in unison at the sensation. She bends until her forehead rests against his and releases her breath. "I think you were right, Mulder," she breathes, "I think touch was a very effective way for us to rediscover our common language."

He bucks hard up against her, and she gasps as he says, "Then let's start communicating, Scully…."

She positions him, then slides him deep inside, sighing, "Okaaaaaay."

And, oh God, do they communicate. Their bodies have a hundred conversations with the thrusts of their hips, their hands tell a thousand secrets with the slide of their fingers, their mouths spell a million words with the tangle of their tongues. It is exquisite, how many years of history they share, how intricate the language they speak has become through those years.

She drapes herself over him, allowing his body to take her on a journey, undulating, undulating with every heave of his pelvis, until she can feel herself nearing the edge. She grips his skull, fisting her hands into his hair, as she allows her head to loll back on her neck. "Mulder, fuck, Mulder," she pants.

He grasps her hips, pressing his fingers into her flesh, and grinds her against him with fury.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," she keens, then shudders in his arms, falling limp while he spills over the edge alongside her.

"Scully!" he sobs, pulsing, throbbing, holding her tightly as he empties himself within her.

They stay there, skin pressed against skin, hearts open, listening. He strokes her hair while she kisses his brow, and their bodies whisper quietly between.

She's about to pull back when he stops her. He reaches his hands to cradle her jaw, then looks in her eyes and says seriously, "Scully, you really are my sweetheart."

She slaps his hand playfully away while groaning her distaste. But then she reached down and hugs him, and after a moment, she quietly whispers back, "You're my sweetheart, too."

In her mind, she reaches behind him and feels for the new rows of stitches, the soft wool she'd envisioned while they walked through the field an hour ago. She needs to feel it, to touch it, to know he is still whole and complete. And when she finally finds it, it is flowing and intricate beneath her fingers, more wonderful than she could have imagined. She grabs hold of it and pulls, wrapping it around them, vowing to never let him unravel again.


End file.
